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Sunday, February 21, 2016

“Give it Up: Exchanging Consumer Culture for Neighborly Covenant”

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC, Manhattan, KS
February 21, 2016
Sermon Text – Luke 12:13-21

A man approaches Jesus with a very practical problem. “Teacher,” he says, “Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me!” Ah, yes. Family squabbles over material goods. This is clearly a problem we don’t have in the 21st century. We’ve evolved.
Jesus, though, being the great teacher that he is, refuses to take the bait. He was never one to be bossed around much, anyway. Rather than doing what the man asks, he uses this as a teaching moment. “Be careful!” he says. “Be on guard against all kinds of greed, for we do not find life through owning a bunch of stuff.” And then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced an abundant harvest of grain. And the rich man thought to himself, ‘What should I do? I don’t have enough room for all this grain! I know what I’ll do. I’ll take down my small, shabby barns and build shiny, new, big ones. I’ll store all of this grain in the new barns. And I’ll sit back and relax and enjoy it all. I have enough grain here to last for years! I can relax, eat, drink, and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night, you will die. And all this grain? What happens to it? How can it help you?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.”
In most Bibles this parable is called “The Rich Fool.” Biblical scholars usually point out a couple of problems with the man’s behavior. Note that no one seems to think the problem is that he’s been successful. There’s nothing wrong with reaping a good harvest. The problems begin with his plan for the harvest: “What should I do? I don’t have enough room! I know what I’ll do. I’ll take down my small barns and build myself bigger barns. I’ll store my grain. I’ll relax and be merry!” David Lose refers to this as the Holy Trinity of “me, myself, and my.”[1] His thoughts are entirely centered on self – no mention of thanksgiving to God or the land, no concern for others.
The second foolish thing is that he seems to believe the lie that material possessions can create total security. “If I just had enough money to take that vacation…” “If I just had a more reliable car…” “If I could just get the newest iProduct…” “If only I had a bit more in my retirement account…”
I don’t mean to make you feel badly about having these thoughts. I think they’re pretty normal human thoughts. And apparently people have been having similar thoughts for centuries. I have these thoughts often.
But the problem is this: these thoughts are delusional. Even if we have more and more and more – no matter how big our barns are – it’s not ultimate security. Because: from dust we come and to dust we shall return. There are some truths that trump even the biggest barns.
And money can’t buy happiness. Well, actually that’s not entirely true. It turns out that happiness-studiers have examined this and a certain amount of money – an income of about $75,000 per year – can buy happiness.[2] Below that point, people feel insecure and are overly stressed worrying about making ends meet. That’s natural, of course. Having enough to provide for your basic necessities is of critical importance.
But above the $75,000? It turns out that once we’ve met our basic needs and have a little leftover for leisure, we don’t need more money to be happy. We don’t need bigger barns. More doesn’t equal happier.
Of course, it can be a real challenge to believe this if you’ve been raised in a hyper-capitalist society because our economic system is positively dependent on making sure everyone buys into the lie that bigger is always better, more is always the ultimate goal. From the time we are born, we are inundated with marketing that indoctrinates us to be good consumers. Some of us remember when we suffered great tragedy and loss on September 11th and President Bush told us to go shopping. Yeah. Like that.
When the man in the crowd approached Jesus and asked him to fix his financial problems, Jesus wasn’t willing to do so. But he did give the man a bigger gift: he gave him a parable that invited him to live into an alternative narrative.  
We all need an alternate story if we are to live beyond what Walter Brueggemann calls the “totalizing” narrative of capitalism in overdrive.  The narrative is “totalizing” because it impacts absolutely every aspect of our lives. It doesn’t simply affect the way we earn and spend our money. It affects our interactions with other people (“Let’s see…if I do this for that person, what will they owe me?”). It affects the way we teach our children – I wonder sometime about the damage done to our children by teaching them their worth is directly related to a number on a page. I worry about all the subtle and not-so-subtle ways we teach our children that the ultimate goals in life are to produce and consume. This totalizing economic ideology even affects our leisure – why must games always be about winning? And why do winners take all?
But though our economic system and its corresponding values seem as natural as the air we breathe, they are not inevitable. There are alternative choices.
As we continue on through this season of Lent, some of us may still be looking for ways to more intentionally connect with the Holy – and ways to look more critically at the air we are breathing and see if it’s the only way we can nourish our bodies and spirits. If you are considering giving something up this Lent, might I suggest exchanging a reliance on consumer culture for an intentional decision to live into neighborly covenant?
The language I’m using here is borrowed from this book: An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture. In this book, three scholars from vastly different arenas came together to ponder the default economic system we live in…and to imagine an alternate reality. Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John  McKnight are, respectively, scholars of organizational development, the Hebrew Bible, and community organizing. They’ve come together to encourage us to consider a complete shift in the way we understand the way resources are allocated in our culture.
The authors write (and I’ve included the quotes from the book on an insert in your bulletin in case you want to chew on them more later): “Economic systems based on competition, scarcity, and acquisitiveness have become more than a question of economics; they have become the kingdom in which we dwell. That way of thinking invades our social order, our ways of being together, and what we value. It replicates the kingdom of ancient Egypt, Pharaoh’s kingdom. It produces a consumer culture that centralizes wealth and power and leaves the rest wanting what the beneficiaries of the system have.”[3]
As these three scholars lay out what the current dominant cultural-economic narrative looks like, they are essentially asking us to examine the air we breathe. Most of us take these things for granted to the point that they seem to be just “the way things are.” They name four pillars that hold this narrative in place: a belief in scarcity, worship at the altars of predictability and safety, and an addiction to privatization.[4]
Instead of clinging to these pillars, we are invited to consider an other kingdom. An alternative reality where we intentionally choose a neighborly covenant with others. When we choose to live in neighborly covenant with one another, the questions are no longer about what happens to the Holy Trinity of “me, myself, and I.” The daily report on NPR each morning isn’t about how the market closed yesterday. There is no delusion that if we can only build our barns big enough we will be safe.
Instead, when we live in neighborly covenant there is a trust that there is always enough to go around, mystery and uncertainty are all around (and do not cause anxiety), there is space for human error and grace, and the goal is restoration and health and justice for every living thing on our planet.[5]
I want to take just a moment and share about two initiatives happening in our own community that seem to be shining a light on what life in neighborly covenant might look like. I’ve included some links and further information there in your bulletin if you want to learn more later.
First, Circles Manhattan is a non-profit that is relatively new to Manhattan but is a part of a much larger national movement that’s been around in one form or another for at least twenty years. The goal of Circles Manhattan is “to end poverty by building relationships and environments that empower families and communities to thrive.”
Now, ending poverty is a pretty big goal. The way Circles approaches their task is unique. There is an understanding that all of us have something to learn and something to share with one another – and that our capacity to grow and help the world is not determined by how much money we have in the bank. In the Circles model, people who are experiencing poverty are encouraged to go through training to become Circles Leaders. In doing so, they create a plan to move themselves and their family out of poverty. They then work with Allies (people with middle-to-high income levels) to keep moving their plan forward. Through these circles of support, people who are experiencing poverty are supported as they work to get to “Enough” and people who already have “More Than Enough” develop neighborly relationships with people they might not have otherwise known.
There are so many ways to be involved with Circles – becoming a Circles Leader or Ally, yes, but also providing behind the scenes support with meals, childcare, or other tasks needed to keep the program alive and well. Circles Manhattan is a glimpse at what Neighborly Covenant looks like in action.
The other local initiative I want to mention is the Buy Nothing Project. Our local group is a part of a wider international movement. The Buy Nothing Project offers “people a way to give and receive, share, lend, and express gratitude through a worldwide network of hyper-local gift economies in which the true wealth is the web of connections formed between people who are real-life neighbors.”
People who live near each other share resources. Participants are invited to share, lend, give, and ask for things they might want or need. No money is exchanged. No bartering takes place. Everything is freely given and received. And people are encouraged to get to know one another, building relationships and creating a network of mutual support. The Buy Nothing Project is a glimpse of what Neighborly Covenant looks like in action.
I wonder what the parable of the Rich Fool might sound like if it happened in a world where Neighborly Covenant was the norm?
The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, “Let us gather together and give thanks to the land, for it has blessed us with a rich harvest.” And he gathered together friends and strangers at his home.
They relaxed, ate, drank and made merry….but there was still more to go around. And so they decided to build new and larger barns in order to carefully take care of all they had been given.
As the years went on, they worked together to care for the land. In the lean years, they cared for one another. In the fat years, they made merry. And in every year – both the fat and the lean – they gave thanks to God, for all had Enough.




[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=720
[2] http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.abstract
[3] An Other Kingdom, introduction, page xiii.
[4] pp. 3-4.
[5] Here I am paraphrasing the ideas in Chapter 2.

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